Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese

Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese
behavior of the word bi, which is widely taken as the comparative marker, will be
discussed firstly in 3.1. Base on the idea that bi is a complementizer that introduces a
comparative clause; we then adopt the functional hypothesis for the BCC structure.
3.3 The Syntactic Properties of bi in Comparative Constructions
Previous studies of BCC often start with classifying the category of the
comparative morpheme bi, based on which they try to study the syntactic structure. In
this section, we examine the possible syntactic categories of bi, and then propose that
with some historical change, bi behaves more like a complementizer that introduces
the degree clause to adjoin as the datum of the comparison.
3.2.1 bi As a Verb
Originally, bi has the meaning of “compare” and “compete;” however, after long
years of historical derivation, behaves quite differently in both context. Chao (1968)
maintains that bi is always a verb and thus analyzes BCC as an instance of serial verb
construction (SVC). However, lots of syntactic evidence have been listed to manifest
that bi in BCC does not behave like a verb (Hong 1991, Hsing 2003). Though the verb
bi ‘to compete’ and the comparative marker bi were historically related, they are
actually homophones today.
First, aspect markers can be added to a verb like (71a), which is also feasible
when bi is used as a verb (71b). However, there is no way to add the aspect markers to
the bi in the comparative construction (71c).
(71) a. Laoli na le maojin qu xizao. [SVC]
Laoli take ASP towel go take a bath.
‘Laoli took a towel to take a bath.’
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中正大學 e-Thesys (94 學年度)